Photo credit: Caitlin Curran
On the way to Harvard Square today, a male friend consulted me about the best way to solidify his potential budding relationship with Scarlett Johansson. Offer her a cigarette? Invite her to lunch? Lure her over to his house with promises of alcohol and Scrabble? As it turned out, he never had the chance – fans surrounded Johansson for her entire brief visit. Maybe next year, friend.
Johansson, Hasty Pudding’s Woman of the Year, made a fashionably late arrival in Harvard Square today, which provided an opportunity to take in the surroundings: An unadvisable number of press photographers were crammed into the back of a truck, while Miss Massachusetts, on hand to play a distant second fiddle to the actress, waited patiently in a green convertible. An enthusiastic group of men in sequined outfits and red lipstick danced around trying to keep warm. It was as though cross-dressers had taken over the world, made Miss Massachusetts their queen, and banished the paparazzi to prison for eternity.
Hasty Pudding is Harvard’s theatrical student society, and as their Woman of the Year, Johansson was required to participate in the shortest parade ever -- about one block down Mass. Ave. -- and then retreat to one of Harvard’s theaters, so that everyone could stare and laugh awkwardly. Along the way, one fan managed to lob her a stuffed porker -- perhaps a passing reference to the Chinese Year of the Pig? -- which she graciously caught and kept.
For the frozen and celebrity-deprived men of Boston, the Hasty's Woman of the Year shindig has become a seasonal highlight. Last year Halle Berry famously danced for the crowd, and this year male suitors for Ms. Johansson lined the streets of Cambridge, holding up their camera phones, grinning uncontrollably, and shouting invitations to various Harvard parties. The most overheard statement was, inevitably, “She’s so hot!” No shit, sherlock.
